[Rob Hood]

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2008/7/8/rants-453.html

Was listening to some newsradio today - many analysts are painting a bleak picture. Heard that Hummer and Saab were going to be let go, maybe more. I've already seen where Chevy is not sponsoring several NASCAR races next year.

Rick Wagoner is supposed to deliver an announcement tomorrow morning at 0830 EST. Should be worth listening to.

This post has been edited by Rob Hood: Jul 15 2008, 05:59 AM

[trackbird]

This was interesting in GM's thing that Kevin quoted:

"As part of its cost-cutting, GM plans to eliminate health care coverage for U.S. salaried retirees older than 65, effective Jan. 1. Wagoner said the company will increase pensions for affected retirees and their surviving spouses to "defray the impact." "

Can they do that? Presumably they've got a contract with those folks, right?

Salaried usually means "management" and not union. I don't think they have much of anything approaching a "contract" with retired management. They have a requirement to provide pension and probably "some" health care. I'm betting that the terms of the healthcare are not spelled out specifically. So, as long as you have some type of insurance (it may have a $10k a year deductible before they pay anything, but it's insurance), you're probably getting what you're owed.

I could be wrong.

And I do agree that we need to have the government stop pushing the crash standards that are creating 4,200 lb cars. Some years ago, a 4,200 lb vehicle was a truck, not a GTO (they may be a touch lighter than that, but still). I think they have been pushing much of the increases to help cars stand up to impacts with the large quantity of SUV's on our roads. However, now that the SUV craze has come to an end, it seems reasonable to relax some of those rules and allow manufacturers to lighten their cars a bit. You can always run into something larger than you on the road (tractor trailers, commercial trucks, pick up trucks), but now that we are seeing the "great SUV revolt", we should see less of them on the road over time. So, relaxing the crash standards seems logical to me.

Besides, you can't save everyone... (IMG:http://www.frrax.com/rrforum/style_emoticons/default/nutkick.gif)

[marka]

Howdy,

Salaried usually means "management" and not union. I don't think they have much of anything approaching a "contract" with retired management. They have a requirement to provide pension and probably "some" health care. I'm betting that the terms of the healthcare are not spelled out specifically. So, as long as you have some type of insurance (it may have a $10k a year deductible before they pay anything, but it's insurance), you're probably getting what you're owed.

Wow, that sucks.

Can we move to universal health care yet please? You know, like all the other civilized countries where it seems to work pretty well, particularly in comparison to "no health care for you, sorry about your bad luck"?

Mark